Ireland's Gay Prime Minister Blasts Catholic Church

There are few countries in which the Roman Catholic Church has fallen further than in Ireland.  Once a bastion of Catholicism that exported priests across the globe, attendance at mass has plummeted and scandal after scandal has rocked the nation as crimes and horrible mistreatment of individuals ranging from young altar boys to young unwed mothers and their babies have been revealed.  One has to wonder what possessed Pope Francis to visit Ireland to attend the World Council of Families -  a gathering that is anything but progressive and open to tolerance.  If Francis thought his visit would heal raw wounds, he seemingly was mistaken as Ireland's gay prime minister let loose on the Church's ugly history of abuse and wrong doing.  The Advocate looks at the comments of Ireland's "out" prime minister, Leo Varadkar as Francis stood by.  Here are excerpts::

In a Saturday speech referred to as "blistering" by The Guardian, Ireland's out prime minister, Leo Varadkar, highlighted the numerous scandals and abuses of the Catholic Church, as Pope Francis stood to his side.

The Dublin speech took place during the pontiff's first visit to Ireland in almost 40 years; he was there for the Church's World Meeting of Families. During Varadkar's speech, the prime minister repeatedly brought up the sexual abuse of children perpetuated by Catholic priests and made mention of a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed systemic clerical abuse.

Varadkar also spoke of the Church's forced adoptions of children from unwed mothers, a mass grave of infants recently found near a Catholic mother-and-baby home, and Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, where "fallen women" were housed and often subjected to horrors.

"I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the church charged with responsibility for their protection and education," Varadkar said. 

The failure of ecclesiastical authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others —  adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments."

Varadkar described "brutal crimes perpetrated by people within the Catholic church, and then obscured to protect the institution at the expense of innocent victims... stains on our state, our society and also the Catholic church. People kept in dark corners behind closed doors, cries for help that went unheard.”

Varadkar also spoke of a changed Ireland; one where homosexuality and abortion were illegal during the last papal visit. Now, Ireland is led by a gay man and grants women the right to make their own reproductive decisions.

The Irish people understand "that marriages do not always work, that women should make their own decisions, and that families come in many different, wonderful forms, including those headed by a grandparent, lone parent or same-sex parents, or parents who are divorced."

It is a speech that Francis very much needed to hear and which foretells what will happen to the Church if radical changes do not occur. Until bishops and cardinals are punished and removed from office (and not sent into retirement with plush perks) and the Church's stance on sex and sexuality leaves behind 12th century beliefs, the exodus of churchgoers will continue.  The Washington Post also looks at the meeting of Varadkar and Francis and the reality of a vastly changed Ireland:

On Saturday, Varadkar welcomed Pope Francis to Ireland, a nation that has radically changed since the last papal visit, in 1979. At that time, homosexuality was still a crime. Now, the country’s prime minister is gay. 

Varadkar is a distinct example of how what was once an overwhelmingly white, Catholic nation is now increasingly diverse and its laws increasingly secular. Ireland is the first country to have legalized same-sex marriage through a popular vote, and this year, the country repealed its restrictive abortion ban. Many see the country’s new policies and shifting demographics as evidence that the Irish are moving further and further away from the Catholic Church.
 And in his remarks in front of the pope Saturday, the prime minister said the Irish have “voted in our Parliament and by referendum to modernize our laws.” He said new policies reflect the country’s understanding that “marriages don’t always work, that women should make their own decisions, and that families come in many different wonderful forms including those headed by a grandparent, lone parent or same-sex partners or parents who are divorced and remarried.”

Brian Finnegan, editor of Ireland’s Gay Community News, said that the last time a pope visited, 39 years ago, Irish leaders were more likely to have said: “ ‘We wont have any contraception or allow people divorce or even talk of homosexuality,’ just ‘your eminence, you’re here, and we love you, and we love the church.' ”  “There would’ve been no defense at all,” he said.

That makes Varadkar’s meeting with the pope that much more symbolic. For many, an openly gay leader of a predominantly Catholic country meeting the leader of the Catholic Church, an institution that does not recognize same-sex marriage, would have once been unthinkable.

Varadkar had a brief meeting with the pope following his more public remarks Saturday. His spokesman told the Irish Times that he “said to the pope that there are huge numbers of people here who have faith in their heart but who feel excluded and alienated from the church because of what happened.” . . . . campaigners for sex abuse survivors said the pontiff had not gone far enough in taking responsibility for the Vatican’s role in covering up abuse at the hands of the clergy.

I do not envy Francis' situation, but clearly, more inaction and crocodile tears will not save the Church from the consequences of it many wrongdoings. 

It's Official: Ireland's Stinging Rebuke to Catholic Church

To me, Ireland should be a case study for Republicans and their Christofascist base of what eventually happens when a minority tries to force its antiquated and hypocrisy soaked religious beliefs on all of society.  With the vote in Ireland official, two-thirds of the citizenry voted to end a near total ban on abortions spearheaded by the Catholic Church in 1983.  The Trump/Pence regime would do well to realize that their agenda of appeasing Christofascists will not end well in the long run despite the presence of right wingers like Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.  Here in America, the sex abuse scandal of priestly sexual predators continues with almost daily stories somewhere in the country (In Australia a high cleric was recently criminally convicted for his role in covering up abuse).  Meanwhile, we see an almost daily stream of evangelical pastors caught up in sexual scandals as evangelicals show themselves to be the most hate-filled and hypocrisy drenched individuals in society as them support an occupant of the White House devoid of any shred of morality or decency.  The New York Times looks at the stunning rebuke in Ireland:

DUBLIN — Ireland voted decisively to repeal one of the world’s more restrictive abortion bans, sweeping aside generations of conservative patriarchy and dealing the latest in a series of stinging rebukes to the Roman Catholic Church.

The surprising landslide, reflected in the results announced on Saturday, cemented the nation’s liberal shift at a time when right-wing populism is on the rise in Europe and the Trump administration is imposing curbs on abortion rights in the United States. In the past three years alone, Ireland has installed a gay man as prime minister and has voted in another referendum to allow same-sex marriage.

The “yes” camp took more than 66 percent of the vote, according to the official tally, and turnout was about 64 percent.

The outcome signaled the end of an era in which thousands of women each year had been forced either to travel abroad or to buy pills illegally online to terminate their pregnancies, risking a 14-year jail sentence. The government has said that general practitioners — doctors who are the first port of call for patients — will be asked to provide abortions, although they will still be allowed to conscientiously object to termination at their clinics.

The vote followed months of soul-searching in a country where the legacy of the Catholic Church remains powerful. It was the latest, and harshest, in a string of rejections of the church’s authority in recent years.

The church lost much of its credibility in the wake of scandals involving pedophile priests and thousands of unwed mothers who were placed into servitude in so-called Magdalene laundries or mental asylums as recently as the mid-1990s.

“This is devastating for the Roman Catholic hierarchy,” said Gail McElroy, professor of politics at Trinity College Dublin. “It is the final nail in the coffin for them. They’re no longer the pillar of society, and their hopes of re-establishing themselves are gone.”

That shift in attitude was driven in part by prominent cases, such as the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, who had asked for a termination of her pregnancy but later died of complications from a septic miscarriage. Ms. Halappanavar’s face was printed on placards supporting abortion, and on Saturday morning people placed flowers in front of a mural of her face in Dublin.

Ireland “is taking the proper steps to separate church and state and to move forward as a more progressive country,” said Conor Flynn, a 22-year-old student.

Church and state need to be totally separate and in America, progressives and truly moral people must continue to strive to destroy the power of the Christofascists and their political whores. 

In Rebuke to Church, Ireland Votes to End Abortion Ban

In a sharp rebuke to the Roman Catholic Church - which while ostensibly neutral had numerous Catholic organizations campaigning hard for a retention of Ireland's near total ban on abortion - Irish voters appear to have voted by a landslide for repeal.  The result while not yet formal is yet a further underscoring of the Catholic Church's near total collapse of power in Ireland, once a bastion of Catholicism.  The abortion vote comes roughly three (3) years after Irish voters voted to legalize same sex marriage despite the Church's vociferous opposition (Ireland currently has an openly gay Prime Minister).  A live blog on the Irish Times can be found here.  Another  piece in the Irish Times looks at the projected results.  Here are highlights:

Counting is under way in the referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution, with a result due to be declared this afternoon.

On Friday night, an exit poll carried out for The Irish Times by Ipsos/MRBI indicated a landslide victory for the Yes side, with 68 per cent, versus 32 per cent for No.

Early tallies in constituencies across the Republic have indicated a strong lead for the Yes side and campaigners on both sides of the debate have been reacting to the forecasts on Saturday morning.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: “I think what we’ve seen today really is the culmination of a quiet revolution that’s taken place in Ireland for the past 10 or twenty years. This has been a great exercise in democracy and the people have spoken.

“The people have said we want a modern constitution for a modern country, that we trust women and we respect them to make the right decision, the right choices about their own healthcare.”

Mr Varadkar told RTÉ the results so far show the nation is united, not divided. When asked what he believed the key factors were influencing people’s vote, the Taoiseach said: “Most of all and above all, it was the very many brave women and men who told their personal stories as to how the Eighth Amendment impacted on them, and impacted on them adversely.”

Iona Institute spokesman David Quinn has acknowledged that many people who voted Yes were not pro-abortion, but were pro-choice. He told RTÉ’s Marian Finucane show: “Even the expectations of the Yes side were surpassed.”  This was a complete reverse of the 1983 result, he said. “I don’t think anyone expected it to this extent.”

Ireland has become a modern, educated nation.  This, combined with the horrific sex abuse by Catholic clergy and the now fully revealed horrors of the Church run children's homes and homes for unwed mothers put the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the Church on display for all to see. And for the record, I believe abortion should be rare and that science based sex education - something opposed by the Church and evangelicals in America - should be the main method of avoiding unwanted pregnancies.  That said, the government should not be making choices for women and their doctors. 

Irish Priests Bucking Catholic Church on Gay Marriage

Ireland was once a bastion of Catholicism and exported priests around the world.  Now, the Church has lost much of its authority in the wake of the release of reports on the sexual abuse of minors by priests, the exposure of the horrors that took place at the Magdalene laundries, and in some ways worse of all, the cover ups and threats and intimidation of victims and their families by the Church hierarchy.  Mass attendance has plummeted and the Church finds itself a consistent opponent of modernity and some would argue, decency.  With Ireland poised to vote on same sex civil marriage tomorrow, the Church leaders find themselves with a new challenge: priest are opposing the Church's official anti-gay position.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

For the Rev. Pádraig Standún, a Catholic priest in western Ireland, voting “yes” is a matter of what’s right. To another Irish priest, the Rev. Iggy O’Donovan, it’s about creating an inclusive state.

To the Rev. Martin Dolan, Ireland’s upcoming referendum on same-sex marriage is deeply personal.

“I’m gay myself,” he announced to his Dublin congregation in January. It was a surprise ending to Dolan’s homily, in which he urged his congregation to vote “yes” in the referendum. But his parishioners took it in stride — they gave him a standing ovation, according to the Belfast Telegraph.

As the Friday referendum approaches, Ireland seems poised to become the first nation to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. The Catholic Church itself opposes the measure.

In at least a few cases, though, Irish Catholics may vote “yes” not in spite of their priests, but alongside them. Standún, O’Donovan and Dolan are among a group of priests who have bucked Church leadership to voice support for the amendment. Speaking to BuzzFeed, The Rev. Tony Flannery, founder of the reform-minded Irish Association of Catholic Priests, estimated that 25 percent of the country’s clergy would vote”yes.”

[O]ne of many signs in recent decades of the greatly diminished influence of the Catholic Church, which also unsuccessfully opposed a 1995 referendum in which Ireland legalized divorce.


[T]the Catholic Church is practically the only major Irish institution opposing the referendum. The government supports it, as do major media organizations, unions and business groups. Even elderly church-going ladies have said they’re voting “yes.”

“I’m just going to vote for gay people because I have nothing against them. I can’t understand why anybody is against it; they’ve done no harm to anyone,” 83-year-old Rita O’Connor told the Irish Times on her way out of Sunday morning Mass in Dublin this month. “I think it’s a stupid carry-on the way the Church is going on at the moment, ridiculous.”

Rev. Flannery, who was suspended by the Vatican in 2012 for contradicting Church orthodoxy on issues like homosexuality and the ordination of women, said even the Church’s muted opposition could be damaging.

“This referendum in particular is one that is very attractive to the younger generation. For the official Church to be taking such a consistent no line on it, they’re just further alienating a group that has largely left the Church anyway,” he told Reuters. “I would have thought that, that was foolish.”

Will The Catholic Church Pay A Price in Ireland for Its Anti-Gay Jihad?

Next month Ireland will vote on a referendum to approve same sex marriage.  The main opponent to equality?  The scandal plagued Roman Catholic Church that allowed rampant sexual abuse to go on for decades - if not centuries - and operated the infamous Magdalene Laundries where  young women and girls were worked as virtual slaves.  Some believe that the Church will pay a significant price for its rabid homophobic positions.  Others believe that the Church's supposed theological arguments against marriage equality is little more than made up bullshit.  A piece in the Irish Times looks at the smaller, anti-gay church that may result.  Here are excerpts:

A conference discussing the religious case for marriage equality has heard there will be “a price to be paid” by the Catholic Church for its stance in relation to the upcoming referendum.

Marriage Equality: The Religious Case for a Yes Vote took place on Saturday and was hosted by Faith in Marriage Equality at the school of ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin.

Sociologist Dr Richard O’Leary told the conference there was a danger of a “smaller, more anti-gay” church emerging from the public debate in relation to the referendum.

“I predict there will be a price to be paid by the Catholic Church after this referendum,” he said. “Because of the negative stance taken by the bishops, the church as an institution could emerge as a smaller, more anti-gay, more conservative denomination. Some of the bishops might be satisfied with that outcome, but many people might feel that it would be a regrettable and avoidable outcome.”

Church of Ireland bishop of Cashel, Ferns & Ossory Michael Burrows said he was supporting a yes vote in the referendum and referred to gay rights as “the great justice issue of our time”.

“The call for same sex marriage is a logical and timely development in the march of law reform and equality.

“I am convinced that it will be a contribution to a fairer and more truly equal Ireland, and I cannot see any way in which it could be considered repugnant to the common good, or indeed to the vital role of the family.

“I have come to believe that the rights of gay people have become, very properly, the great justice issue of our time just as the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women were in the past. I could not vote against this proposal because of my utter abomination of homophobia.

Trinity College vice-provost Prof Linda Hogan said there were no theological impediments to gay people marrying.  “Theologically speaking, there are no impediments to gay and lesbian people marrying in a civil ceremony,” she said.

“The Christian tradition affirms the fundamental equality and dignity of all people, whether we are heterosexual or gay. Faith leaders should not marginalise or exclude people who are gay rather they should promote equality and inclusion.”

She also highlighted the “progressive elements” within religious traditions, which she argued can be marshalled in support of a yes vote in the referendum. Among them were “concepts of dignity, justice, equality, human flourishing and well-being”.

Rev Canon Dr Ginnie Kennerley said the stance adopted by religious institutions may be related to “conflicts between factuality and scripture”.

“There has always been disagreement on what is and is not permitted by the bible,” she said. “There have been conflicts between factuality and Scripture as we have understood it down the centuries – over the flat earth, over slavery, over evolution, over apartheid, over the position of women.”

 The Church's track record on being right on moral and other issues is abysmal.  This is yet another example of the Church being wrong and standing for injustice and bigotry.

Ireland’s Big Gay Turnaround

Today is St. Patrick's Day and it is noteworthy how Ireland has transformed itself from a bastion of Catholicism to a nation likely to approve same sex marriage despite the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church to maintain a 13th century understanding of human sexuality.  Obviously, the Church's sex abuse scandal and horrific disclosures of what went on at the Church's Magdalene laundries helped the Irish to belatedly conclude that the Church leadership is utter bankrupt on moral issues.  But the change is nonetheless stunning.  An article in The Daily Beast looks at the transformation.  Here are highlights:

At the very back of New York City’s St Patrick’s Day parade this year, a small gay group will join the official festivities for the first time ever.

The organizers of the parade have showed extraordinary hostility to homosexuals for more than 40 years, fighting tooth and nail to keep gay groups out of the annual celebration of Irishness. This year’s small gesture of inclusion—of gay NBC employees—was only made after Mayor Bill de Blasio boycotted the parade last year (he has done so again this year) and a number of sponsors also withdrew from the 253-year-old celebration to protest its openly exclusionary attitude.

So it is fitting that a gay group will march in New York this year as, back home, a decision of tremendous significance is about to be made by the Irish people regarding gay rights.

A proposal to alter the constitution to allow same-sex marriage in Ireland looks set to sail through when a referendum on the issue takes place May 22.

While there are senior bishops who continue to equate homosexuality to “Down syndrome or spina bifida,” the truth is that Ireland, especially if one is talking about the big cities of Dublin, Cork and Galway, is largely a tolerant, progressive, and inclusive place these days.

Civil partnerships, for example, were introduced in Ireland in 2010 and have swiftly become an uncontroversial part of everyday life, a remarkable turnaround given that it is only 22 years since homosexuality itself was decriminalized, in 1993.

The latest polls show a resounding 71 percent in favor of changing the law.

It is unimaginable that the Irish public might ever have even considered voting in favor of same-sex marriage in such large numbers had the Catholic Church—which strenuously opposes the move—not been so utterly disgraced by the sex-abuse scandals that have been exposed by a welter of inquiries over the last decade. The 2005 Ferns report and the 2009 Murphy and Ryan Reports documented a shocking catalog of abuse by Catholic clergy and lay church workers on an unimaginable scale. Even now, barely a month goes by without some horrific new case of clerical abuse being exposed by the media or judiciary.

Casting gay marriage as an attack on the family (the section of the constitution that is to be changed is titled “The Family”) has formed the core of the No camp’s argument.

However remarks by Bishop Kevin Doran, a conservative Catholic leader, on Irish radio station Newstalk this week were interpreted by many as a truer, less polished version of anti-gay marriage orthodoxy. Bishop Doran compared homosexuality to a disease.

As the Irish social historian and equal-rights campaigner Diarmaid Ferriter commented, “the more the bishops have to say about marriage, the better for the Yes side.”

“Now it’s really all about making sure young people— students and young families—get out and vote. It is about being seen as equal in the eyes of the law and the state and peers. We just want to live our lives in society the same as anyone else.

If there is any "disease" involved in the issue, the disease is ignorance embracing religious belief.  I hope the "Yes" faction wins and that the Church finds itself pushed further into the political and social wilderness. 

Gay Marriage: A Coming Watershed in Irish History

For centuries the Roman Catholic Church has been a dominant force in Ireland.  The drive for home rule in the 1800's was fueled by Catholics and Catholicism.  Now, with a referendum on legalizing same sex marriage set for May 22, 2015, the Catholic Church may be about to see its power and influence repudiated.  With surveys showing a majority of citizens in favor of marriage equality and every major political party, unions, and other civic organizations supporting a "Yes" vote, the Church finds itself resorting to what it has used in the past to try to force its will on the populace: lies and fear mongering.   A piece in The Guardian looks at the situation.  Here are highlights from the first article:

When Enda Kenny, the taoiseach of Ireland, recently announced that 22 May would be his preferred day for a referendum on marriage equality, an already drawn out campaign finally had a date. In May, Ireland could become the first country in the world to pass marriage equality by a popular, national vote.

To get this far is nothing short of a phenomenal achievement. Homosexuality was only decriminalised in 1993; the Civil Partnership Act passed in 2010. The dedication of LGBT rights groups has changed hearts and minds. And now, Ireland is staging a referendum that enjoys support from all major political parties and the majority of the public, something unimaginable just a decade ago.

The broad support for marriage equality has the no campaign on the back foot. It’s no surprise that the most vehement opposition comes from the Catholic church and small lobby groups acting as foot soldiers in what they perceive as a battle of ideologies, rather than the progression of civil rights.
Already, the no side has confused the debate by focussing on children, as opposed to consenting adults seeking the right to marry. Repetitive statements about “denying” children mothers and fathers are red herrings and at odds with Ireland’s social reality, where one-third of children are raised outside the traditional heterosexual, married family structure..

The actor Colin Farrell has emerged as a passionate advocate.

 The problem for the church is its depleted moral authority. With support and facts in short supply, the no campaign is using another powerful referendum campaign weapon: fear.

The bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran, said recently that gay people can get married, just to people of the opposite sex. “There is nothing wrong with being nice to them,” he said, “but that is not what the referendum is about.”

Factual inaccuracies and stridency are off-putting, not to mention offensive, but within the Irish media, there is a sort of paranoia about “balance” and giving equal air time to both sides of the debate. This is, after all, a country where the national broadcaster, RTE, still broadcasts the Angelus twice a day.

For now, the campaign is tentatively taking shape and the yes side is acutely aware of complacency. The world will be watching Ireland in the lead-up to May’s referendum. If the Irish electorate seizes this opportunity, it won’t just be a local victory, it could be the watershed moment the global movement for marriage equality has been waiting for.

I sincerely hope that the "yes" vote forces work hard to turnout marriage equality voters to send the Church a strong message that its days of power and authority are over and that Ireland will no longer be duped by lies, fear mongering and the embrace of ignorance.

United Nations Challenges Vatican on Magdalene Asylums and Forced Adoptions

Virtual slaves at a Magdalene Asylum

As I have noted before, the Oscar nominated movie Philomena is a must see.  Not only is the acting superb but the movie is based on a true story and in the end is a staggering indictment of the Roman Catholic Church.  Now, the United Nations is demanding accountability and more importantly records on the Church's Magdalene Asylums or Laundries and the manner in which young women were forced to relinquish their babies to adoption - often for a fee paid to the religious order running the horrid institutions.  Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Vatican is trying to claim that it had and still has no control over these orders and institutions located outside of the Vatican.  It's the same disingenuous approach that has been taken by the Vatican in seeking to shirk blame for the worldwide sex abuse scandal.  Here are highlights from Religion Dispatches:

In addition to calling Archbishop Silvano Tomasi and Bishop Charles J. Scicluna to account for a decades-long, worldwide epidemic of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Committee conducting this historic proceeding in Geneva last week also demanded responses to questions concerning the church’s trampling on girls’ reproductive health and rights.

Chairwoman Kirsten Sandberg and others wanted to know what the church was doing about uncovering the whereabouts of the children born to young, unmarried women who were essentially enslaved in Ireland’s Magdalene Asylums or Laundries and forced to relinquish their babies to adoption, a situation brilliantly dramatized in the film Philomena, with Oscar-nominated Judi Dench playing the real Philomena Lee.

“The position of the Holy See,” pronounced Tomasi, the Vatican’s Geneva representative to the UN, “is that the state has already taken its responsibility and is proceeding…through the courts….It is the responsibility of local institutions.” In other words, it’s not our job— the same position the Vatican officials took, repeatedly and disingenuously, on their refusal to act on local clergy sex abuse crimes.

Charging that the policy of the church institutions that ran the Laundries has not been to turn over their records, a blunt Sandberg issued a challenge: “I trust that you will ask the local churches to do that.” Neither Tomasi nor Scicluna, formerly the Vatican’s top sex abuse prosecutor, said that they would.

The chairwoman also brought up the story from Brazil of “the nine-year-old girl who had an emergency life-saving abortion after rape by her stepfather,” followed by the excommunication of mother and doctor, “with no measure taken against the father,” aka, the rapist. “Explain this,” Sandberg said. In that case, regional archbishops Jose Cardoso Sobrinho astonishingly admitted that the rapist had “committed an extremely serious crime,” but that “abortion is even more serious.”

Soon after, another committee member, Hungary’s Maria Herczog, brought up a situation from Nicaragua, where the Catholic Church vigorously supports a ban on all abortions. The situation involved “a ten-year-old girl forced to give birth after being raped, with the full support of the Catholic Church and the local community.

The church’s recent history worldwide is replete with stories of priests forcing the women they impregnated to have abortions; of nuns impregnated by priests being thrown out of their convents while the men remain priests in good standing; of mothers of priests’ children being forced to sign confidentiality agreements to get any support at all.

These issues—forcing children to bear children, forced child relinquishment, abandonment of children by Catholic priests—were not the main subjects of this hearing, but that they were mentioned is noteworthy because the church’s history of child abuse has taken many forms. And that history is tied intimately to the hierarchy’s history of secrecy, hypocrisy on the sexuality of its own clerics, misogyny which denies women’s moral authority, and gender apartheid, which relegates women to second-class status and surely enabled those all-male power brokers in clerical collars to callously dismiss the desperate mothers of molested children who came to them for action.

There is more to the piece that deserves a full read.  The bottom line is that as an institution the Roman Catholic Church - and most certainly its hierarchy from the Pope on down - is morally bankrupt and unworthy of any respect, at least by decent moral people.  Those who continue to attend mass and contribute to the Church monetarily are complicit in the horrors done by the hierarchy and the predators that it protects.   Catholics need to open their eyes to the truth and walk away.  The Vatican and the hierarchy will only change if and when the Church's survival is seriously threatened by a mass exodus of members and a shutting off of the money spigot

.

Philomena: A Must See Movie Based on "The Lost Child Of Philomena Lee"

Actual photo of young inmates at a Magdalene facility

The horrors done by the Roman Catholic Church both in terms of the sexual abuse of children and youths by priest and the horrid mistreatment of young girls by various Catholic religious orders continues to unfold.  A movie called Philomena starring Dame Judi Dench and based on a true life story highlights the horrors and the indecency of what was done on a wide spread basis by clergy who can only be described as evil by any normal moral standard.  A trailer can be seen here.  The movie is nothing less than an indictment of the Catholic Church and it should be mandatory viewing for anyone who remains an active Catholic.  Sadly, many who perpetrated these horrors never were held accountable and of those living, many continue to live a comfortable life within Church facilities.  Here's a description of plot of the movie:

Philomena is the true story of one mother’s search for her lost son.

Falling pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena was sent to the convent of Roscrea to be looked after as a “fallen woman”. When her baby was only a toddler, he was taken away by the nuns for adoption in America. Philomena spent the next fifty years searching for him in vain.

Then she met Martin Sixsmith, a world-weary political journalist who happened to be intrigued by her story. Together they set off for America on a journey that would not only reveal the extraordinary story of Philomena’s son, but also create an unexpectedly close bond between them.

The film is a compelling narrative of human love and loss and ultimately celebrates life. It is both funny and sad and concerns two very different people, at different stages of their lives, who help each other and show that there is laughter even in the darkest places.

The book “The Lost Child Of Philomena Lee” was published in 2009. It acted as a catalyst for thousands of adopted Irish children and their ‘shamed’ mothers to come forward to tell their stories. Many are still searching for their lost families.

What the description omits is that many of these children were basically sold to Americans wealthy enough to pay large sums to the convents and abbeys that housed these girls and young women in brutal conditions, working the as veritable slaves.  Do a Google search of the term "Magdalene laundries" and read what comes up.  It will not be pretty.  Wikipedia notes as follows:

These institutions (also called laundries and asylums) were complexes in Europe, Australia and North America that enslaved women, institutionalizing them against their will, and stripping them of their rights and identities.

As I ask over and over again, how can moral and decent people continue to support and be a part of such a morally bankrupt - and hypocrisy filled - institution?  Is thinking for one's self and reaching one's own moral conclusions that frightening?  Were I still a Roman Catholic, I would feel literally dirty knowing what I know.  Thankfully, many Catholics are walking away from the Church towards a more moral life, especially in Ireland where the Church is in a free fall.

Here in America it is a tragedy that too many in the larger public see conservative Christians and institutions such as the Catholic Church as worthy of respect and even deference.  Simply put, they are not nice and decent people and they and the Church deserve absolutely no deference.  Criminal prosecution of the Church and clergy would be more in order.